joel_rosenbaum

S/N tracking of bills was put to great effect in "A Simple Plan" too (perhaps my favorite Sam Raimi movie).

You need one of these

"In high school there’s generally one acceptable way to be, and it’s dictated by the exigencies of dating. There are the people who try to be that way, and then there are the other, clunky, disastrously uncool individuals, the nerds, who swim upstream in those waters. ... Real Life is actually a lot more like high school. The common denominator prevails. Excellence is not always recognized or rewarded. What we watch on our screens, whom we elect, are determined to a large extent by public polls. Looks count. A lot. And unlike the best of the college experience, when ideas and solutions somehow seem attainable if you just get up early, stay up late, try hard enough, and find the right source or method, things on the outside sometimes seem vast and impossible, and settling, resigning oneself, or hiding and hunkering down becomes the best way of getting along."

*please disregard*

"I don't know if you can, but can you get an order for ONS, that's O-N-S, Junior Market, the address is 1934 East Anaheim, all the windows are busted out, and it's like a free-for-all in here and uh the owner should at least come down here and see if he can secure his business-"

I'm guessing it's because the people responsible for producing wide release movies are not typically members of a Christian faith. There are of course explicitly Christian movies but it seems like their focus is more conventionally social and/or political.

Scenes from a Marriage? That's a miniseries although it is filmed like a movie.

I hope Jason comes out to Brand Nubian's " " for the next show.

This was definitely one of those "heavy rotation on HBO" movies. I know I've seen it more than once. I loved it as a kid, which means it is almost certainly terrible. Some of the jokes are pretty on the nose (e.g. Saturday Night Dead?) I feel like the HDTGM crew could spend an hour discussing the terrible puns and dated cultural references scattered throughout.

You don't have to imagine. I mean, if you remember the 90s and 00s.

fixed

I think the common thread is hubris. A "great man" brought low by his arrogance. There's a timelessness to these kinds of stories because hubris is an unchanging feature of humanity. However, I'm going to flip this a bit because Citizen Kane is also very specifically a movie of its time. I'm not just referring to the fact that it is a semi-biography of William Randolph Hearst, a man whose media empire (and relevance) has dwindled considerably since his death. I'm thinking about the type of story that it tells. Moral fables about tycoons and titans of industry. Specifically, the tycoon in this movie -- Charles Foster Kane -- bears an uncanny similarity to a particular set of characters found in Sinclair Lewis' novels. Lewis was hugely popular in his prime, so it's easy to imagine his influence extending to Welles and his early work in particular. Now I'll admit that this is probably an imperfect parallel and that my perception is probably biased by the fact that I just finished reading Elmer Gantry. However, I'll be damned if there isn't the same sort of nasty, brutish authoritarianism in Kane that show up in so many of Lewis' characters. The obvious example would be Buzz Windrip from It Can't Happen Here, who was coincidentally modeled in part after William Randolph Hearst. (As an aside, it's easy to forget that Hearst was an avowed fascist who once said, "Whenever you hear a prominent American called a fascist, you can usually make up your mind that the man is simply a loyal citizen who stands up for Americanism.") And I think Paul nailed it when he referred to Kane as a villain. But this isn't like, to use a contemporary example, a gangster film, where Kane is some obvious Capone-like villain operating outside the boundaries of law. Kane is a specific type of villain: someone who operates within social norms and is in fact sanctioned by them. I would even argue that Kane (and people like him) actually dictates what those norms are. That is, for me, the thrust of the yellow journalism and political parts of the story. And that's where the comparison sticks with me, Kane is unambiguously American. He has tendencies exhibited by many prominent Americans and espouses American values, just not the ones that most of us are proud of. Obviously other nations and cultures have their share of hucksters, sociopaths, and villains, but the way Kane goes about his business feels particularly familiar (and perhaps more so in our present circumstances). And criticizing American norms and traditions is basically the underlying theme of every Sinclair Lewis novel. Another similarity exists in a plot device used by both Welles and Lewis: minor protagonists that serve as narrators. Lewis used these characters (Doremus Jessup, Frank Shallard, Jim Lefferts) to insert his point of view in the story. The conceit of Citizen Kane is that almost the entire story is told by these kinds of characters (Jedediah Leland et al.). However, I should point out that Citizen Kane diverges from Sinclair Lewis' works in one very significant way. That would be hubris, which grudlian brought up at the top of this now rather long post. It's a classic storytelling device and Welles puts it to good use in the movie. Kane has a classic rise and fall and although he ostensibly still has his wealth at his deathbed, evidence of his collapse is obvious. On the contrary, Lewis' villains pretty much never succumb to hubris. They might have a few setbacks but they pretty much succeed in spite of their flaws and in some cases because of them. And just to make sure that I wasn't completely insane for drawing this comparison, I looked up articles to see if Welles ever attributed influence to Sinclair Lewis, or if there existed any sort of critical analysis linking the two. I came up empty, so I'm probably talking out of my ass. However, I found out that Welles did produce Dodsworth and Arrowsmith for the Campbell Playhouse. So, he was at least aware of Lewis' work.

Mac wore it better anyways

On a positive Body Rock note, I just recalled this (old school?) Mos Def track:

On the flipside, Enrico Dandolo was 94 years old when his venetian pirates crusaders conquered Constantinople!

Mary Shelley -- 19 when she wrote Frankenstein. Lafayette -- general in the US revolution* by age 19, leader in the French revolution aged 32. John Keats -- dead by 26. Paul Dirac -- formulated the Dirac equation at age 25-26. *Most of the "Founding Fathers" were barely older than kids themselves (Hamilton, Burr, Hale all were teens or in their early 20s)

There definitely was: Keith Haring and Basquiat, for two famous examples.

In case June wants to learn, here's Kim Delfin -- one of the dancers from Body Rock -- instructing Mr. T on how to pop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzgJaFkIltA

Just a Lorenzo Lamas related question. Did anyone actually watch Renegade? I mean on purpose, not because they left the TV on after Quantum Leap reruns.

So what you're saying is: Chilly is the inspiration for Mark Renton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9ZNKGrpnKM

Home Alone 3? The one without Macauley Culkin?

Was anyone else stunned that there was an extended discussion casting relatively unknown Alden Ehrenreich as young Han Solo and not one mention of Hayden Christiansen? Well, maybe stunned is too strong of a word. Mildly surprised?

What was everyone's favorite needless literary reference in the movie? Mine was William Carlos Williams This Is Just To Say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold